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My Journey of States-8 Ohio

2/28/2018

A WRITER'S WIT
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce
Born June 24, 1842, Meigs Cty., Ohio
Died 1914, Chihuahua, Mexico

A. Bierce

MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the eighth post of fifty.

Ohio (1957, 1959, 1963)

On one of my family’s trips east, in 1957, we stayed in a cabin that, I swear, sat on nothing but concrete blocks as its foundation. When semis passed in the night, our little cabin shook like a big bowl of gelatin. In 1968, passing through Columbus in mid-August, the sun was but an orange disk in the sky. ¶ In 1882, my great-grandmother, Catharina Berges, emigrated from Germany and lived for a short time in Canal Dover, Tuscarawas County (later Dover). She then moved with her first husband to Missouri. ¶ Ohio became the seventeenth state in 1803. 1903. 2003. Wow!

Historical Photographs

If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on link:
1-Kansas
2-Oklahoma
3-Texas
4-Louisiana
5-Missouri
6-Illinois
7-Indiana

NEXT TIME: Final Installment of Barcelona Photographs:
Architecture, Art, Landscape, Black-and-White, Flags & Signs

My Journey of States-7 Indiana

2/21/2018

A WRITER'S WIT
Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason.
Theodore Dreiser
Born August 27, 1871 Terre Haute, Indiana
Died December 28, 1945 California

T. Dreiser

MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the seventh post of fifty.

Indiana (1957, 1959, 1963, 1969, 1976, 1994)

Shoals was our first stop when my family drove east in 1959. My father put in a good nine or ten hours of driving—over 650 miles and four states in one day. During that trip—before the interstate highway system was complete—we passed through downtown Indianapolis. My mother took a Super 8 film of the experience, flags billowing off some important building. Hot. Exhaust pouring in the windows of our Pontiac. On the second day, my father would drive through three states in one day (Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia), and we would think we were making grand time, but we were in the mountains and it took from dawn to dark to drive 550 miles. We were two hours from my aunt and uncle’s home in Falls Church, Virginia. It would be my third trip to Washington, DC, and I was only eleven!

In 1969, my college choir performed in South Bend, and I was able to visit with the daughter of one of mother’s high school teachers, Jo Leatherman Perkey, who made a special effort to see our performance. The choir had fun touring the Indy 500 track (above). ¶ Indiana is the nineteenth state. Residents celebrated its bicentennial in 2016.

Historical Postcards

If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on link:
1-Kansas
2-Oklahoma
3-Texas
4-Louisiana
5-Missouri
6-Illinois

NEXT TIME: My World of Short Fiction

Famous Mother and Son Ponder Lives

2/16/2018

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A WRITER'S WIT
I've heard people on panels say, “You must have a Web site. You need to tweet. Repeat the title of your book constantly,” and I just want to say, “Shut up. Everything you're saying is wrong.” People will know instantly if your only motivation for tweeting is to sell books.
Maureen Johnson
Born on February 16, 1973

M. Johnson

My Book World

Cooper, Anderson and Gloria Vanderbilt. The
   Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and
   Son on Life, Love, and Loss. New York:
   HarperCollins, 2016.

The epistolary nature of this book (if emails can be considered letters) makes it interesting at times. TV journalist Anderson Cooper exchanges emails with his mother, both of them attempting to make sense of their lives as mother and son. At times, the exercise feels belabored as if Cooper is indeed a writer interviewing another celebrity. Yet there are enough genuine moments to provide readers with the feeling they’re witnessing something real. His mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, makes a startling statement:

“Although I have never told you or any one else, I did this [to work under her birth name] because I believed that if I succeeded in writing, or acting, or painting, it would expiate in some mysterious and secret way the public vilification of my mother and free her to love me as I longed to be loved” (101).

One issue that deeply affects both of their lives is the death of Anderson’s father, Wyatt Cooper. Gloria is totally dumbfounded. Anderson’s brother, Carter, will commit suicide. And Anderson himself declares his life would have been so different if his father had lived:

“I certainly longed for that sense of safety as a teenager. It would have been nice to have a male figure in those years. It always surprised me that none of the men you were friends with made an effort to reach out to Carter or me after Daddy’s death. I kept secretly hoping someone would come forward as a mentor or a friend, occasionally taking me out for a slice of pizza or to a movie” (204).

Cooper turns inward after his father’s death, obtains a fake press pass, and begins his adventurous and often dangerous career in journalism overseas. He admits that if his father had lived, he might not have burned such a trail. Lucky for us that he did.

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-7 Indiana

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My Journey of States-6 Illinois

2/14/2018

A WRITER'S WIT
It's very difficult to escape your background. You know, I don't think it's necessary to even try to escape it. More and more, I start to think that it's necessary to see exactly what it is that you inherited on both ends of the stick: your timidity, your courage, your self-deceit, and your honesty—and all the rest of it.
Sam Shepard
Born Fort Sheridan, Illinois Nov. 5, 1943
Died Midway, Kentucky, July 27, 2017

S. Shepard

MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the sixth post of fifty.

6. Illinois (1957, 1959, 1963, 1969, 2006)

When I was a child, Illinois was one of the four states my dad drove through in a single day as we headed to Washington DC to see my aunt and cousins. Beyond that, Illinois didn’t mean much to me until 1969, when my college choir’s tour included Chicago. In the middle of February with dirty snow piled onto the sidewalks like little mountains, a college friend and I walked under cloudy skies and chatted about what most twenty-one-year-olds do. The choir sang at a Methodist church in Evanston, and as a rising organ pupil I played the postlude. The sanctuary was cold. ¶ Even later, in 1976, Ken and I would venture across the Mississippi River to visit his grandparents’ old farm near Thebes, not far from Huck Finn’s haunt, Cairo. The humidity was so unbearable that we were drenched standing in full shade viewing his grandparents’ graves in the cemetery.

In 2006 we traveled on AmTrak from Fort Worth to New York and changed trains to the Lakeshore Limited in Chicago. We took a brisk walk around during our layover. It was early May, and the trees were just beginning to bud out. We’d already had ninety degree temps in Lubbock, so it seemed that we were stepping back in time.

HISTORICAL POSTCARDS & Trunk Decals

Illinois is the twenty-first state. Its centennial was held in 1918. The year 2018 will be another big one. Check it out!

If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on link:
1-Kansas
2-Oklahoma
3-Texas
4-Louisiana
5-Missouri

NEXT TIME: My Book World

Katy Tur's Unbelievable Trip with Trump

2/10/2018

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A WRITER'S WIT
Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John.
Boris Pasternak
Born February 10, 1890

B. Pasternak

My Book World

Tur, Katy. Unbelievable: My Front-Row
    Seat to the Craziest Campaign in
    American History. New York: Morrow,
    2017.

This engrossing book seems to be made up of at least three strands: 1) MSNBC reporter Katy Tur’s narrative of her assignment to follow then candidate Donald Trump throughout the entirety of the 2016 presidential campaign. 2) In doing so she shares a great deal about what it’s like to be a reporter placed in such a position, the great moments, the uncomfortable moments, the shortchanging of her personal life. 3) And speaking of that, Tur interweaves bits of her personal life—including her childhood and youth, her love life, and her travels—into the weft of her fascinating storytelling.

With regard to 1) she has mixed feelings about leaving her assignment which places her in London, England. Accepting it means moving to New York, giving up her flat in London, her friends there, a boyfriend in Paris, I believe. Turning it down would mean giving up the opportunity to cover one of the most controversial presidential candidates in history, and might also mean squelching her career by not playing ball with the producers at MSNBC.

Katy Tur shares with the reader the details of her travels with DT: flying coach, packing economically yet in a way that allows her to appear fresh on camera (dry shampoo?); a significant lack of sleep because she can be wakened at any moment to be given an assignment; keeping up with tens of thousands of work-related emails, many of which she winds up dumping. Sad, sad meals grabbed here and there, the lack of exercise on any given day or week. But most of all, we see what it feels like to be on camera nation-wide:

“Hardball wants me live. I take a deep breath, stand up, put in my earpiece, and hook back into MSNBC’s live coverage.
‘Well, let’s go to Katy Tur. Katy, are you used to this kind of trash talk from him?’ I hear Chris Matthews but I can’t understand what he’s saying. Trump is still bellowing behind me. Chris tries again. ‘I’m trying to couch this in the most politically correct way. Are you used to the trash talk that Donald Trump threw at you tonight?’” (77).

Finally, Tur’s personal history adds a tantalizing touch to her career. It seems that her parents, Bob and Marika Tur begin in the 1970s a helicopter service in which they cover in Los Angeles such happenings as “fires, shootings, and most unforgettably, police pursuits. Their first big get was Madonna’s 1985 wedding to Sean Penn” (108).

From her parents, especially, father, she learns the thrill of the hunt. As a child, she goes up with her dad in his ‘copter, and one point she, without benefit of a harness, hangs out the cockpit a bit too far. Her dad says little but apparently turns white. At thirty-two or -three Tur must feel jaded in some sense, as anyone who’s been in a business for a decade must, but she’s got a long career ahead of her if she can sustain this kind of reporting and writing—if she can continue to hang out there without a harness.

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-6 Illinois

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My Journey of States-5 Missouri

2/7/2018

A WRITER'S WIT
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.
Mark Twain
Born November 30, 1835, Florida Missouri
Died April 21, 1910, Redding, Connecticut

M. Twain

MY JOURNEY OF STATES is a series in which I relate my sixty-year quest to visit all fifty states in the U.S. In each post I tell of my relationship to that state, whether brief or long, highlighting important personal events. I include the year of each state's entry into the union and related celebrations. I hope you enjoy my journey as much as I have. This is the fifth post of fifty.

5. Missouri (1956, 1957, 1959, 1963, 1968, 1976 + many others)

Richard and Brother Vic and Sister Peggy at Bagnell Dam, Missouri—1956

On my family’s first trip through the Show-Me state, in 1956, we visited Bagnell Dam in the Lake of the Ozarks. I imagine that we took U.S. Highway 54 because it was as a direct shot you could get from Wichita. The trip was a tryout for my brother, who was three at the time, to see how he would take to long periods in the car. During that trip we also visited mother’s family friends in Tipton, not more than an hour’s drive from the dam. We stayed in a mom-and-pop motel, and I witnessed one of the hardest rains I’ve ever seen in my life.

We traveled through Missouri every time we went back East to visit my dad’s family. One memorable sight were the charcoal factories that were nestled among the trees of the rolling hills. Some of them were partnered with rustic establishments where you could breakfast on eggs and smoked bacon. In Brownington is located the grave of my great-grandmother’s first husband, who drowned when, during a rainstorm, he drove a team of horses into a river, drowning him, his horses, and a calf loaded in his wagon. The year was 1884. ¶ My partner Ken’s family are all from the Saint Louis area. In the seventies I began to get a closer look at the state: clear streams and rivers, fried catfish, verdant woods and lawns, friendly people who embraced me as one of their own.

Richard Feeding the Fish at Missouri Hatchery—1976

Historical Postcards

Missouri is the twenty-fourth state. Its centennial was held in 1921, so it won’t be long until another hundred years have passed. I wonder why there is a forty-year gap between Missouri’s and Kansas’s statehood—so close and yet so far.

If you missed earlier My Journey of States posts, please click on link:
1-Kansas
2-Oklahoma
3-Texas
4-Louisiana

NEXT TIME: My Book World

Barcelona Photographs 2 — The People

2/5/2018

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A WRITER'S WIT
Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to thirty pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating.
William Burroughs
Born February 5, 1914

W. Burroughs

Dear Fellow Travelers,

I offer you the second round of photographs from our November trip to Barcelona. This time I picture primarily the lovely people of that city, from those selling their wares on the street to those joining us as we stroll down one of the grand boulevards. Appreciate your generous comments from last time! RJ

Click on Barcelona Photographs 1 if you missed that installment.

NEXT TIME: My Journey of States-5 Missouri
More Photographs of Barcelona Once They're Processed!

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Forgiveness for a Mother

2/2/2018

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A WRITER'S WIT
Our conventions, our conventional signs have a [sic] Active function to perform; thinking in its lower grades, is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.
Havelock Ellis
Born February 2, 1859

H. Ellis

My Book World

Alexie, Sherman. You Don’t Have to
Say You Love Me: A Memoir. New
York: Little, Brown, 2017.

I once attended one of Mr. Alexie’s readings in Iowa City; it was for his most recent publication, The Toughest Indian in the World. He’s tall and lanky; at that time his hair was of medium length. Handsome. His performance was half stand-up act, for he is acerbically, wickedly funny, and half dramatic reading in which he voiced all the parts. Not only the parts written on the lines, but you could hear the voices of his ancestors in the background, encouraging this talented young man to voice the Indian truth.

Once again, in this painful but poignant memoir in which Alexie explores the relationship with his mother, he does not fail to delight, does not fail to sear our consciousness with the wrongs of our white ancestors. Just as his skin color condemns him, an innocent man, anyone with white skin must share the blame of our ancestors who ravaged the land and its native peoples as if it were all one prehistoric wellspring of riches. The book composed of 160 short chapters is NOT linear in structure; I do not think that is a particularly Indian way to tell a story. The author begins in 1972 when his family moves into a HUD home on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington, when the author is six years old. Some chapters are as short as a four-line poem. Other chapters are poems several pages in length (including one about his mother as quilter), each one a work of art in itself, enhancing a lyricism spread throughout the entirety of the book.

By beginning with an intimate description of the HUD house, Alexie gives us a double-edged view. On the one hand, the house represents a major step up for the family from the cramped quarters where they’ve lived before. The HUD house is not huge, but it does have a toilet, a bathroom, and that means a great deal to the family. Yet these new cramped quarters are an important metaphor for the Spokane Indian, whose entire tribe has been smothered, crammed into a piece of earth that represents a fraction of what it once owned. Alexie is always shoving against these boundaries of what white people expect of Indians, knowing their place. One must wonder how this nation would have developed if the white man had approached the Indians with respect and conceded to their wishes. If the white man had purchased land instead of stealing it, what then? If the white man had formed a government with native Americans instead of one that killed them off, what would we have today? Would any of us be here?

NEXT TIME: Barcelona Photographs2 — Its People

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My Journey of States-8 Ohio

Ohio (1957, 1959, 1963)

Historical Photographs

My Journey of States-7 Indiana

Indiana (1957, 1959, 1963, 1969, 1976, 1994)

Historical Postcards

Famous Mother and Son Ponder Lives

My Book World

My Journey of States-6 Illinois

6. Illinois (1957, 1959, 1963, 1969, 2006)

HISTORICAL POSTCARDS & Trunk Decals

Katy Tur's Unbelievable Trip with Trump

My Book World

My Journey of States-5 Missouri

5. Missouri (1956, 1957, 1959, 1963, 1968, 1976 + many others)

Historical Postcards

Barcelona Photographs 2 — The People

Forgiveness for a Mother

My Book World

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